It's a Young World After All
Have you ever wondered how old the Earth is? Is it millions of years old? Billions of years old? Or only a few thousand years old? You might not know it, but these questions are veryimportant. You see, the Bible says God created the world and everthing in it in six days. And the Bible gives us information that shows the Earth is only a few thousand years old. But many people who do not believe the Bible say that the Earth, and our Universe, are billions of years old. They say that science proves that our Universe cannot be young. The fact is, however, when we look at the scientific evidence, we can see that the world is not billions of years old. It is only a few thousand years old. True scientific facts always agree with what God wrote in the Bible. That makes sense, because God created the Universe, and He inspired the Bible. We would expect scientific facts to agree perfectly with the Bible, and they do!
Earth’s Magnetic Field
Have you ever played with magnets? If you have, then you know how they “pull” toward each other, or they push away from each other. You might know that the pull of a magnet is what makes a compass work. The arrow on a compass always points north, because it is being pulled by a magnetic force. Where does this force come from? It actually comes from inside the Earth. Deep inside the Earth, electrical forces cause a magnetic pull that moves the arrow of a compass.
What does that have to do with the age of the Earth? It just so happens that the force is getting weaker and weaker. In fact, if the force continues to decay at the rate it is decaying now, then in just a few thousand years, your compass won’t work, because there will not be a magnetic force! This is a problem for those who believe in an Earth that is supposed to be billions of years old. If the Earth really was billions of years old, then according to the present rate of decay, the magnetic force would have been so strong that life on Earth would not have been possible. If the Earth is only a few thousand years old, the decay of the magnetic field is just what we would expect.
Where Are All The People?
One excellent piece of evidence for a young Earth comes from the field of human population statistics. According to the records that are available, the human population on Earth doubles approximately every 35 years. If humans evolved (which they did not, God created them) about 1 million years ago, then there should be about 1 x 102000 people on the Earth today! That number is a 1 followed by 2,000 zeroes. But the entire Universe could only hold about 1 x 1082 people. Evolutionary dates would mean that the Earth’s population would be 101918 times greater than would fit into the entire Universe! Using young Earth figures, however, the current world population would be approximately seven billion people. Once again, the idea of a young Earth fits perfectly with the available evidence.
Helium Keeps Going Up
If you have ever seen a balloon filled with the gas helium, then you know it goes up. Where does helium come from? It is produced mostly inside the Earth and works its way out of the ground and up into the atmosphere. When we look at how much helium is in our atmosphere, and how fast it is getting there, we discover something rather interesting. The helium in our atmosphere is far less than it would be if the Earth’s atmosphere were billions of years old. The present rate of how much helium goes into the atmosphere gives us a much younger age for the Earth than billions of years.
It is important to remember that we are not really trying to “date” the Earth or Universe with these scientific methods. We are simply saying that when the same kinds of methods are used, there are many scientific ways that show the Earth and the Universe to be much younger than billions of years old. In fact, there is not a single scientific discovery that proves the world to be billions of years old. All of the scientific evidence fits perfectly with a world that is a few thousand years old.